Heat maps provide a useful visual representation of numerical data that depends on either one or several independent variables. As an example, heat maps provide a visual representation of quantities such as storage allocations over a period of time that are relevant for monitoring data storage systems.
Heat maps that represent values of a single parameter like storage allocations over time may have discrete blocks that must be fit into a display window. For example, each block may contain a single color that represents a sampled data value in a particular fixed time interval. In this case, the number of blocks used may be the result of a tradeoff between having a sufficient number of samples of data and being able to resolve individual samples.
When distributing a number of blocks in a display of a specified number of pixels, conventional plotting programs divide the specified number of pixels by the number of blocks to get the widths of the blocks. If there is any remainder, such plotting techniques add that remainder to blocks at one boundary of the display, e.g., the left boundary. In some arrangements, plotting programs add the remainder to randomly selected components.
Plotting programs that use heat maps as described above frequently juxtapose a heat map with another type of plot, such as a line plot. Such juxtaposition may provide additional insight into the data.